


Redemption (Isn't in the Job Description)

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: Seared with Scars [4]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Guilt, Responsibility, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24246562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: “Bet he believes in redemption,” Rossi hears one of his new teammates say, and his smile is bitter as he strides into an office that used to belong to a better man.Redemption is in Christ’s job description. Justice is in Rossi’s.
Series: Seared with Scars [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739086
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	Redemption (Isn't in the Job Description)

**Author's Note:**

> *shrugs*  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I love hearing from you all :)

David Rossi is born after his mother wins a bitter, thirty-two hour long battle with Death and brings him into the world. Later, she will tell him that she should have known then he was going to be the stubbornest person to ever walk the Earth.

“And,” she adds, “the couple next door was fighting when you were born, as if you weren’t enough to deal with already.” Her tone is fond but weary.

“Explains a lot,” a thirteen-year old Rossi says. “That I was born into conflict.”

His father snorts into his coffee. 

Rossi’s father dies five days later in a hit-and-run.

Standing in their church by his mother’s side, his gaze fixed straight ahead as his mother grips his hand so hard she leaves bruises, Rossi’s eyes burn, but not with tears.

He’s angry. So incredibly angry. At his father, for leaving, certainly, but infinitely more so at his father’s unknown murderer.

And the anger keeps the grief away.

(It’s far from the last time Rossi stands in black and listens to a priest speak of the shadow of death. But it is the last time he doesn’t reach for the anger on instinct.)

The anger becomes second-nature. His mother cries most nights; Rossi goes out and looks for trouble.

He finds it, more often than not. He’s a rage-filled Italian kid in a poor area in Long Island, there’s always a fight for him.

By the time he’s fifteen, Rossi’s running with the mob-- but not in it, which is what lets him meet his mother’s eyes. 

Rossi’s mother worries, but he never winds up in the hospital, so she lets him leave without asking questions. Some spark died forever inside of her when Rossi’s father died and she’s had enough of arguing with the stubbornest man to ever live. 

He still goes to church. Rossi may not know if he believes in a God who cares anymore, but he knows how to pretend. 

He gets into college and majors in psychology, because he still wants to know  _ why _ . Why someone killed his father for no good reason, why he’s had the shit beaten out of him more times than he can count for no other reason than speaking with a hint of an accent, why he can still believe in a God with life as it is.

Rossi wraps himself in his anger and buries himself in the why of it all and he starts thinking bigger than becoming a cop. 

The cops hadn’t been able to give him a ‘why’ when it mattered. 

He gets married for the first time a year out of college, right before he starts at the Bureau.

He marries her because she reminds him of Emma.

They break up a year later, when the FBI’s started tearing more pieces off of Rossi than even a man like him can spare. 

Rossi gets married for the second time two years after that, right after he starts fighting for the BAU in earnest. He marries his second wife because she’s everything Emma isn’t. This time it lasts three years.

He gets married for the third time a few years after he gets the BAU together. He marries his third wife because she doesn’t remind him of any of the others. 

It lasts eleven months before she packs her bags. 

Rossi doesn’t try again. He’s learned his lesson.

None of them last because there’s only so much a man can give. Even a man as Catholic-- and therefore as used to guilt-- as Rossi. 

They told him he couldn’t understand the why, so he does. His mother had been right when she’d said he was the stubbornest bastard to ever draw breath.

Not that she’d called him a bastard. Catholics were stern about that kind of thing. 

Rossi gives everything he has to the job, to the BAU, to the victims and the families and the unsubs, and he never forgets what the three names in his pocket mean.

In his more philosophical moments, Rossi wonders if the charms in his pocket are just another version of the crucifix he never takes off. 

In his less philosophical (more sober) moments, Rossi’s pretty sure it’s just another reminder of everything he’s futilely seeking redemption for. 

(It takes a certain kind of man to carry his failures in his pocket like that. 

And the job happens to suit the kind of man who keeps a symbol of his sins well.)

He doesn’t pray to the Virgin Mary like his mother taught him to anymore. He hasn’t since he picked up that charm and felt his cross heavy around his neck. 

Rossi prays to Michael, now. The patron saint of warriors. And he holds onto those three names, not his cross, as he does so. 

Under his lead, the BAU gains the highest percentage of cases solved in the entire Bureau. Jason Gideon comes along five years in, Aaron Hotchner fifteen. 

Gideon is the kind of good that comes from looking into the abyss for too long. Aaron is the kind of good that comes from being ice cold and steady under pressure. 

On their first case together, Rossi looks at Aaron Hotchner and, even knowing everything about his career, finds it hard to believe that they’d ever called this man Hot Shot.

Aaron shoots a man to save Rossi’s life without blinking and tears the other unsub apart in Interview with a bland tone and neutral expression. 

Rossi thinks,  _ Oh _ . 

He watches Aaron call his wife twice a day like clockwork and wonders how long Haley will last. 

Rossi never says anything. What good would it do?

He wants them to last. He really does. But even a man like Aaron isn’t capable of giving everything to two things at once. 

Rossi retires exactly two years after Waco. He finishes the case, gets the confession, walks up to Straus, and tenders his resignation. 

He publishes his first book five days later. He makes more in a week than he had in a year as an agent.

His ex-wives get a decent share of the money. Rossi doesn’t give a damn. Money doesn’t matter beyond making sure his mom is taken care of, and the women he’d married deserve everything he can give them, considering what he couldn’t. 

Rossi retires, and he writes and writes and writes while those three names burn in his pocket, and he tells himself that this is what contentment feels like. 

When Gideon vanishes, Aaron texts him. The head of the BAU says nothing beyond  _ Gideon’s gone _ . 

Rossi runs his fingers over those same three names, feels his cross as heavy as the weight of his sins, and starts packing.

Things have changed. But the unsubs haven’t. 

“Bet he believes in redemption,” Rossi hears one of his new teammates say, and his smile is bitter as he strides into an office that used to belong to a better man.

Redemption is in Christ’s job description. Justice is in Rossi’s. 

Just ask the monsters he’s caught. 

(Ask the children he’s failed. Ask Aaron Hotchner, whose eyes are even more shadowed than they had been before he met Rossi. Ask Jason Gideon, who shattered himself on the brilliance of his own mind. Ask every sin that Rossi refuses to confess.)

Rossi doesn’t deserve redemption and he’s not sure if he believes in it. 

But he’s just angry enough to believe in justice.


End file.
